Hot to talk to her about shaving her pussy hair.

Picture the scene: You’re hooking up with a new sexual partner.

A REAL SEX CONTACTS date, maybe, or a friend-with-benefits. Maybe she’s girlfriend material, maybe she’s just a one-night stand. She takes off your pants. Your breathing is shallow now as you anticipate what’s going to come next. She takes off your underwear.

And then she makes a kind of sound — half-laugh, half-croak. She points at your pubic hair.

“Oh, no,” she says. “I’m not going down on all that.”

You frown. “What?”

“Listen, if I’m going down on you, you’ve gotta trim. Shave. Wax. I don’t care — just get rid of all that hair!”

If you’re most guys, that reaction would throw you off a little bit. That’s because generally, guys don’t have to worry about women policing their pubic hair.

Sure, bearded guys might get comments asking them to shave, but there are just about as many who women appreciate a guy with a thick, well-groomed facial forest as there are women who prefer guys clean-shaven. Pretty much no matter what your facial hair looks like, there’s someone out there for you.

But guys telling women what to do with their pubic hair is a bit of an epidemic. Of course, pornography is part of the issue here, but that’s not all of it. So let’s explore a few of the issues at play when it comes to asking your girlfriend (or wife, or hookup) to shave, wax or otherwise go hairless for you.

1. Women’s Bodies Are More Policed Than Men’s

Most guys probably don’t think about this very much, but women are made to think about their bodies constantly.

For many women, in childhood the biggest compliments they’ll get are about their looks, not their personalities or achievements. The beauty industry is designed to convince women they need to constantly obsess over their looks. Actresses in TV and movies are pretty much exclusively beautiful young women; women who don’t measure up in terms of conventional beauty for one reason or another live with a kind of stigma.

Meanwhile, men can overcome “ugliness” and a lack of fashion sense by being successful, rich, funny or otherwise talented and no one bats an eye when they partner up with conventionally beautiful women.

All this to say that women live with the constant hum of pressure and expectation around their physical appearances in a way that men, well, don’t. There’s a reason it takes us less time to get ready for things — no one cares about how we look nearly as much, and we’re competing against a bunch of other guys who also didn’t put that much work in.

So: If you really care about her, don’t add to the weight of every voice asking her to look a certain way.

2. Yes, You Can Go Down On Her Even If She Has Pubic Hair

Admittedly, some amounts of pubic hair make this easier than others. But beyond a certain length, there’s functionally no difference between a hairless pubic mound and one with a little bit of pubic hair.

If you’re insisting she get a full Brazilian wax just so you can return the favour, oral-wise, consider whether that’s really what’s at play here. (On the flip-side, if you keep getting her pubic hair stuck in your teeth or have to pause because they’re tickling your tongue, it’s fair to ask whether she might trim a little bit.)

3. Your Partner Shouldn’t Have To Look Like A Porn Star

If you’re a typical man, most of the sex you’ve seen in your life has occurred on a screen of some sort — TV, movie, computer, tablet, phone. Unless you have a job at a facility that hosts orgies, your day job is working in the porn industry on set, or you abstain from porn but have tons of sex, it’s highly likely that your porn watching will significantly outpace your actual sex life.

And that’s fine — porn and masturbation can be extremely healthy sources of sexual release. The trouble with watching a lot of porn — particularly in your formative years — is that conventions that exist in porn for specific reasons that have nothing to do with real sex start to seem like they’re just how sex naturally is. For instance, hairless bodies look cleaner and sexier on camera — contemporary male porn stars are typically totally hairless as well.

But think about it for a second — you’re asking your partner to spend time and money denying the natural growth of hair just so you can feel like you’re watching porn when you have sex with her? However long you’re even doing it, you’re probably not staring at her pubic mound the whole time, either — in many sex positions, you wouldn’t even be able to see it.

Bottom line, if you’ve watched a lot of contemporary mainstream porn, you’ll probably find women without pubic hair sexy. But that’s no more of a good reason to ask her to get rid of all her pubic hair than it is for her to ask you to get rid of yours — and shave your chest, back, arms and legs while you’re at it.

4. You’re Going To Sound Like An Jerk

This isn’t scientific, admittedly, but it’s basically impossible to try to convince a woman she should alter her body for your sexual whims without sounding like a jerk, a creep, or both. No matter how polite you are about it, you’re basically saying, “Your natural body isn’t good enough for me, and I’m going to continue to find it mildly disgusting unless you change it.”

5. Ask Her How She Feels About It – Naturally

Don’t bring it up out of nowhere. If you’re sleeping together, you’ll have opportunities to talk about pubic hair. One of you will get one in your mouth at some point, or one of you will run your fingers through the other person’s while cuddling after sex, or something like that.

Rather than saying, “Can you shave” or “Would you ever shave,” instead try asking her how she feels about it. Don’t make it a conversation about what you want, make it a conversation about what she wants. The truth is, some women prefer the feeling of going hairless, or at least having less hair. But if she’s attached to what she has, pushing her to change her ways is a dick move.

6. Don’t Ask For Anything You Wouldn’t Do

You’d think this would be self-evident, but if you wouldn’t shave, trim or wax your pubes, why would you ask someone else to? If she has a sense of humor about the whole thing, you could trade — she gets a wax, and you do some manscaping.